Are You Missing God's Best For Your Life?

Are You Missing God’s Best for Your Life?

Matthew 16:24-28

Sermon by Rick Crandall

McClendon Baptist Church - March 29, 2009

*Have you ever been watching something on TV? -- Maybe it was a movie or a show you really wanted to see, maybe it was the big game, and at just the crucial moment the power went out on you. Has that ever happened to you? Don’t you hate that? But you may be missing out on something much more important, without even knowing it. You may be missing out on God’s best for you life. Today I have 5 questions to help you find God’s best for your life.

1. The first question is: Have you measured the treasure of your life?

*In vs. 24-26, Jesus wants you to know how valuable you life really is.

24. Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

25. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

26. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

*Your life, your soul is worth more that all the riches of the world.

-Your soul is worth more than every dime, every diamond and every drop of oil.

-Your soul is priceless. There is nothing worth more.

*I want you to think of the incredible value God has put on your life.

-Nobody in their right mind would trade a finger for a thousand dollars.

-Would you trade your arm for $100,000?

-Would you trade your tongue for a million? -- Of course not.

*But the real you who lives inside your body is worth exponentially more.

-You are priceless, and we know that because you are God’s creation.

*Zig Ziglar put it in perspective when he asked us to think about the priceless masterpieces painted by DaVinci or Michelangelo. Zig said, “I am roughly familiar with the price of the canvass and the paints. In and of themselves, they are not worth much at all. No -- The value of the painting comes from the touch of the Master’s Hand.” (1)

*And you are priceless, because you were created by the greatest Master of all. On top of that, you are priceless because of the high price Jesus paid on the cross for your soul. So Peter tells believers that we should live our lives in Godly reverence, “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19). Have you measured the treasure of your life?

2. And have you determined the destiny of your life?

*Jesus asked in vs. 26, “What is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” Sadly, it is possible to lose your soul -- and most people will, because the just punishment for sin is eternal separation from God in a terrible place called hell.

*We don’t like to think about the wrath of God, but it is a very real thing. Nave’s Topical Bible has over 80 references to the anger of God.

-One of those is Rom 2:5, where Paul said this to judgmental, hard-hearted, Christ-rejecting people, “In accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”

*On the other hand, Paul was speaking to other Christians in 1 Thess 1:9-10. And he talked about how they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”

*The wrath of God is coming on this wicked world. And “what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”

*David Holwick once said: “I am convinced there is life after death. The question is not whether we live forever but where we will spend eternity. For though there is a heaven, which the Bible abundantly makes clear, it makes equally plain that not everyone is going there. Listen to the words of Jesus in Matt 7:13-14: ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’